50 Cent&trade vs Taco Bell&reg

I dont normally care about celebrity stories as there are usually about a trillion other websites that do. But this one is just too amusing.

Back in June, Taco Bell® thought it would be fun to write an open letter to rapper 50 cent™ and ask him to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent for one day in honor of Taco Bell's® new menu items. In exchange for this, Taco Bell® would donate $10,000 to a charity of 50 cent's™ choosing.

The Rapper, real name Curtis James Jackson III, (and pictured here in his mug shot from 1994) felt that this was a blatant infringement of his personal trademarked name and sued Taco Bell® for $4 million.

But here's where it gets kinda funny: Taco Bell® is counter suing 50 Cent™, calling his lawsuit "another of Jackson's attempts to burnish his gangsta rapper persona by distorting beyond all recognition the bona fide, good faith offer that Taco Bell made."

Lawyers for Taco Bell® continue stating "Jackson has used his colorful past to cultivate a public image of belligerence and arrogance and has a well-publicized track record of making threats, starting feuds and filing lawsuits."

To put it simply, 50 Cent™ just got pimp-slapped by Taco Bell®, who told him he was a gangsta wanna-be.

How exactly does one pull a drive by on a corporation, "fiddy?"

A spokesperson for 50 Cent™ called the lawsuit "a sleazy and ill-conceived publicity stunt by Taco Bell's president, Greg Creed, whose disingenuous offer was leaked to the press before it was even presented to 50 Cent's agent".

Personally, I think Taco Bell's® idea was lame. A gradeschool marketing tactic at best. But at the same time, all this suing and countersuing is really quite ingenious when you look at it from a PR point of view.